Alternating sentance structure depending on the subject.

[Henneth Annun]

This is just a thought, that I haven't really thought about to deeply, but what if my conlang switched between SOV and SVO depending on the subject? Like in first person you would use SVO but for third and second person you would you SOV.

So it would be like....
I went to the market
We went to the market
but
He to the market went
They to the market went

Do any of you out there have conlangs that do that? smile  

[Homurakitsune]

It's an interesting idea. I think if you did that creatively enough, then you might even not have to conjugate verbs. Not that I conjugate much anymore anyways, but it's a though. =)

I say if you have an idea, you should experiment with it!  

[Henneth Annun]

eek

Could you give me examples of how I wouldn't have to conjugate the verbs? *ameteur here... sweatdrop *

Right now I just have one form of each eh...verb tense...so everyone gets the same conjugation no matter who you are. None of that "I am" but "you are" and "she is" stuff. Just one form.  

[Homurakitsune]

XWraith_LordX

eek

Could you give me examples of how I wouldn't have to conjugate the verbs? *ameteur here... sweatdrop *

Right now I just have one form of each eh...verb tense...so everyone gets the same conjugation no matter who you are. None of that "I am" but "you are" and "she is" stuff. Just one form.

You'd just make a default for where the verb is in a sentence based on the personal pronoun alone. Actually, if you got really complex, you could eliminate the pronouns too.

Think about it; experiment. That's the best I can do. It's your language. =)  

[priana musht th der must]

it's possible, but you'd have to have a lot of case markings on the nouns.
in latin, you are able to move around the word order because of all the markings on the words.  

[Song Wei]

most of my conlangs are based more on a East European language functioning (most generally Russian Grammar) so words relate to each other in a way that an actual grammar isn't really important, but I like what you have going here!  

[Eccentric Iconoclast]

Shangroulu

most of my conlangs are based more on a East European language functioning (most generally Russian Grammar) so words relate to each other in a way that an actual grammar isn't really important, but I like what you have going here!

bwuh? What do you mean "an actual grammar isn't important"? Grammar is absolutely vital to the structure of every language ever, regardless of the presence or lack thereof of a rigid word order. :/  

[priana musht th der must]

i just learned about something like this in class this week.

it turns out, there's this thing called the animacy hierarchy. and in some languages(i think navajo was one, but i'm not sure), the subject changes depended on where it goes in the sentece.
so with a sentence, "I like bears", and the sentence, "Bears like me", the "i" has to come first in both sentences, because humans are ranked higher than animals, and the verb is inflected to show the thematic roles of the nouns.  

[Forgedawn]

Cool idea!

Earlier today my English broke and I managed to scrape out an odd but grammatically correct sentence (now if I can just remember it)...

Can't seem to remember it. My roommate, amazingly, understood it and replied without hesitating to translate. Woo! But basically I put all the main action verbs at the beginning, and the subject and modifiers at the end. Because the subject was an inanimate object.  

[Henneth Annun]

Hm, I've learned a lot the past year, my question seems silly to me now. ><  

[Woglinde]

XWraith_LordX

Hm, I've learned a lot the past year, my question seems silly to me now. ><

Not really, It got me thinking about various forms of word order for my conlang other than its original SVO format. And besides, the only "Stupid question" is the one that is never asked. 3nodding  

[Woglinde]

Thanks to your thread Wraith, I Incorporated a changing sentence structure system into my conlang. Since it's spoken by a tribal, rank-based society, I figured it would fit in nicely.

Basic structure would go something like this:

SVO: For when the subject of the sentence is dominant over the object.

OVS: For when the object is dominant over the subject.

SOV: When it is not clear if either the subject or object are superior/dominant over the other, or if both are considered equals.  

[Lokaagali]

in languages with the animacy hierarchy objects often move to the beginning of the sentence if the object is higher on the animacy hierarchy than the subject. such as "the horse kicked the man" "man" is higher on the animacy hierarchy than "horse" so it moves to the front.
there is also something known as V2 languages, and these are languages like German, Dutch, and Old English. It has SOV word order, but the second word always has to be a verb, so at the beginning of a sentence, the word order will be SVO and the rest of the sentence will be SOV.